Thammasat University students who are interested in economics, business, sociology, ASEAN studies, Timor-Leste, and related subjects may find a newly available book useful.

Economic Diversity in Contemporary Timor-Leste is an Open Access book, available for free download at this link:

https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/61960

The TU Library collection includes other books about different aspects of economic life in Timor-Leste.

As students know, East Timor, officially the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste, is a Southeast Asian nation. In November 2022, after the 40th and 41st ASEAN Summit in Phnom Penh, the organization issued statement agreeing “in principle” to East Timor’s membership, granting East Timor observer status at high-level meetings and stating that a roadmap to full membership would be submitted in the 2023 summit.

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) website notes:

Timor-Leste demonstrated resilience amid the resurgence of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic since March 2021 and the severe flooding that struck the country caused by cyclone Seroja in April 2021. In response to the devastating impact of the flooding, ADB provided a $1 million grant for immediate relief efforts for the Hamutuk Serbi Komunidade cash-for-work project. […]

Operational challenges.

Although Timor-Leste’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic showed its capacity to respond to external shocks, the country needs to further build its capacity to manage large and complex projects. Governance and institutional capacity for infrastructure management, budgeting and planning, and project implementation and monitoring also need strengthening. Several large-scale reforms to improve public sector management and the quality-of-service delivery are underway. ADB is supporting institutional strengthening through project-based technical assistance, capacity development, and knowledge transfer

Knowledge Work

ADB provided capacity development support through different projects including training on operations and maintenance in the urban water projects and support to the establishment of Timor-Leste’s new water and electricity utility state-owned enterprises. The government’s core organizing structure for economic integration matters and legislative plan have been supported by ADB. Reports were published on topics that include COVID-19 management, investing in technical skills for the youth, sustainable road maintenance, and climate risks.

Last year, a World Bank Timor-Leste Economic Report (TLER) observed:

Timor-Leste’s non-oil economy is projected to expand 3.0 percent in 2022, underpinned by a significant increase in government spending and investment, as well as rebounding private consumption supported by the gradual opening of borders. Increasing prices of food, fuel and electricity driven by the war in Ukraine could be long-lasting and may impact future growth prospects, according to the June 2022 edition of the World Bank’s Timor-Leste Economic Report.

Buffeted by the twin shocks of COVID-19 and Tropical Cyclone Seroja, the non-oil economy grew by 1.5 percent in 2021. A record-high budget with expenditure of nearly 90 percent of GDP bolstered government consumption. A series of fiscal stimulus measures supported employment and incomes, allowing households to maintain their spending. However, this growth follows recessions in 2017, 2018, and 2020 which have left Timor-Leste’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) lower than it was in 2016.

“It is positive to see Timor-Leste return to economic growth following some very difficult years,” said World Bank Director for Indonesia and Timor-Leste Satu Kahkonen. “Although growth is projected to continue at a similar rate in 2023, increasing inflation is likely to have an impact on long-term recovery. Structural policy reforms will be critical to lay the foundation for more diversified and resilient growth in the future.”

According to the report, a strategy to address short- and medium-term challenges is urgently needed. Fiscal policy should aim to protect the vulnerable from rising food and fuel prices, preferably through targeted assistance. The government can promote policy actions conducive to reducing food prices through increasing agricultural productivity and increasing nutrition through diversifying domestic production.

Diversification of the economy through development of export sectors is essential for sustained growth. On the energy side, the efficiency of electricity generation and provision should be improved as doing so would positively impact the budget and reduce the carbon footprint of the country. Diversified energy sources, including renewables, should be explored.

The report also includes a special focus on Human Capital (HC) – which refers to the knowledge, skills and health that people accumulate over their lives, that allows each person to fully realize his or her potential. Measured by the Human Capital Index (HCI), a child born in Timor-Leste today will only be 45% as productive as an adult than she could be if she enjoyed complete education and full health. […]

A sharper focus on human capital investment is essential for Timor-Leste’s sustained long-term growth. Human capital investments not only contribute to economic growth, they also effectively contribute to reducing poverty. Increased human capital investments typically benefit the poor by improving related service deficiencies and gaps, and reducing inequalities.

The publisher’s description of the book notes:

Economic Diversity in Contemporary Timor-Leste analyses various economic dynamics in past and present Timor-Leste. Comprising 14 research chapters, the volume brings to the fore: 1) local, community-based economic values and arrangements; 2) community-based entanglements with a market-driven economy; 3) the colonial and postcolonial governance praxis through which a market-driven economy has permeated the country, and 4) the creative and place-based ways through which local people have responded to these transformations. The collection challenges hegemonic, market-driven analyses which characterise Timor-Leste’s economy as weak, deformed and homogenised and demonstrates the myriad of socially embedded ways through which Timor-Leste’s economy is diverse, richly complex and continually brought into being. To frame the analysis of these complex economic dynamics in Timor-Leste, the collection’s introduction develops the concept of economic ecologies: the assemblages of institutions and their localised and historical relationships mobilised for reproducing collective life, both in its material and immaterial aspects.

The book’s introduction states:

This volume provides data, narratives and analyses that allow us to understand that the idea of a single economy in Timor-Leste is inaccurate. In other words, the economic relations within the country cannot be reduced to what has been depicted as Timor-Leste’s economy in official narratives. We argue that it is critical to dissociate the idea of economy in Timor-Leste from its national inscription into a Timor-Leste market-based national economy, because the latter is unable to take account of economic facts that are outside and beyond the market-driven frame. By doing so, we aim to complicate current imaginaries about the relevant economic dynamics in the country and bring to the fore fragments of the following occurrences: 1) local, community-based economic values and arrangements; 2) community-based entanglements with the market-driven economy;3 3) the colonial and postcolonial governance praxis by which a market-driven economy has been promoted in the country; and 4) the dramatic and creative ways by which local people have responded to transformations in the economic dynamics to which they are exposed. Hence, this collection contributes to replacing hegemonic, market-driven images of Timor-Leste’s economy as pale, disformed and homogenised with a demonstration of the myriad ways in which economic relations in Timor-Leste are diverse, complex and socially embedded.

(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)